Annual Bras d'Or Watch field day set for Saturday

Cape Breton Post

Published: Jul 19, 2017 at midnight

Updated: Oct 02, 2017 at 11:08 a.m.

Annamarie Hatcher, left, and Sarah Penney use an underwater viewer to scan the bottom of the Bras d’Or Lake for plants and animals at the East Bay sandbar. The public is encouraged to help collect data on the Bras d’Or ecosystem during the third annual Bras d'Or Watch field day, which takes place Saturday at the three locations — the Lions Club Marina in St. Peter’s, Morris beach in Eskasoni, and the waterfront in Grand Narrows.

SYDNEY, N.S. — Looking for a relationship?

How about a one-of-a-kind natural beauty who loves swimming and long walks along endless beaches, generates millions of dollars for tourism and fishing industries, and nurtures a wide variety of animals and plants?

On Saturday, the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere Reserve Association and ACAP Cape Breton are hosting Bras d’Or Watch, an annual field day in which local residents get to come out to the lake, play with cool scientific equipment and help gather samples, collect data and observe some of the plants, fish and animals that live in the vast and diverse Bras d’Or Lake ecosystem.

This year’s event, which is sponsored by the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, takes place from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at three locations along the lakeshore — Morris beach in Eskasoni, the Lions Club Marina in St. Peter’s and the waterfront in Grand Narrows.

“I think of us like a dating service,” said Hatcher, an adjunct professor at Cape Breton University’s Unama’ki College and a board member of the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere Reserve Association. “What we’re doing is we’re matching up naturalists, scientists and students with interested residents, people who want to know more about the ecosystem. We’re the facilitators — it’s speed dating.”

This is the third year for Bras d’Or Watch, which was inspired by the Thousand Eyes, a revolutionary program developed in 1898 by Nova Scotia superintendent of education Alexander Howard MacKay, who called on rural schoolchildren to explore nature and collect data on plants and animals across the province.

“They were observing things like when certain plants bloom and when certain fish showed up and that sort of thing, so it turned out to be one of the most powerful data sets to look at climate change in the world. That’s the kind of thing we’re trying to do,” Hatcher said, noting that the records are now housed at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History in Halifax.

“In Cape Breton we have kind of limited funding to put scientists around this large ecosystem, so think of the power we could have if we equipped people with just basic tools to look at changes. We know that changes are coming — it’s inevitable.”

Sarah Penney, ACAP environmental project co-ordinator, said in addition to giving the lake an annual checkup of sorts, Bras d’Or Watch helps build a connection between people and the ecosystem by introducing them to the plants and animals that live there.

“I think it’s easy to take for granted the plants and animals that are in the Bras d’Or, but once you learn their names and learn a little bit about them, I think that sparks curiosity in people, it makes them want to learn more,” said Penney, who recalled when a dive team brought up a couple of critters from further offshore at one of last year’s locations.

“They had a great big oyster and some big crabs and a starfish. A group of kids were just crowded around the tank and they couldn’t get enough of seeing these giant creatures that they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to see close to shore.”

Penney said Bras d’Or Watch isn’t just about the marine ecosystem. There will be bird-watching tours and a plant walk with local experts, as well as games and touch tanks to keep kids entertained.

“It’s not just ‘Come and collect data’ — not that data collection isn’t fun, because it is — but there will also be really hands-on engaging things for younger citizen scientists to do.”

Hatcher said this year they are looking for the first documented sighting of one of these two invasive species of crabs that are on their way up the coast.

Like the alien European green crab, which has been destroying vital seagrass beds and greedily eating native marine animals since arriving in the 1990s, the Asian shore crab and Chinese mitten crab are expected to have an impact on the local habitat when they eventually reach Cape Breton.

“They have not been documented in the Bras d’Or but the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is predicting that they will arrive here, as did the green crab along the same route,” she said. “We’re looking for any of these signs and signals to help us prepare ourselves. We’re not going to have an onslaught and, you know, kill all the invasive crabs, but it will help us prepare for oncoming changes in the ecosystem — our ecosystem.”

That Bras d’Or Lake ecosystem, which includes more than 3,500 square kilometres of open water, bays, barrier beaches and forest, is so unique that the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization officially named it a biosphere in 2011, and it’s one of only 18 places in all of Canada to receive that international designation.

Interestingly, Hatcher, explained, the Bras d’Or is not a lake or an inland sea — it’s an estuary. Rising sea levels allowed the Atlantic Ocean to flood the freshwater lakes and ponds about 5,000 years ago, creating the Bras d’Or Lake that we know today. “The one thing that strikes me about the Bras d’Or is that we can get 30 degrees of latitude represented in terms of the animal species in 10 kilometres. The reason for that is because in previous times Arctic relic species inhabited this area and they’re still here — they’re in the colder, deeper waters of the Bras d’Or. Things like the oyster, they’re relics from past times when the sea level was high and the water temperatures were high. They came from a group of animals called the Virginian enclave so they’re represented of more southerly latitudes, but we get them all here and they’re living together because of the way the ecosystem is structured here. Very unique ecosystem.

“Fall in love with your ecosystem. Get married!”

For more information, visit the Bras d’Or Watch page on Facebook, or contact ACAP Cape Breton by phone at 902-567-1628, or online at acapcb@acapcb.ns.ca.